Sweet revenge in Durban

Rudi Bowe

The Namibian senior women’s Indoor Hockey team played a Hockey Test series against South Africa in Durban.

 In the last meeting between the two countries South Africa lost 2-0 in the final of the African World Cup qualifiers to Namibia in Swakopmund last year.

The South Africa women won the Test series against Namibia as they beat the women of the Land of the Brave 3-0 the Test series.  South Africans won the first and second game with the same score, 2-1. The third and last game the Namibia fought back to draw the game 3-3. In the fourth game the South Africans secured the series win with a 3-0 victory and the last game of the series ended in a 3 all draw.  With the series victory South Africa took revenge after losing in the final of the African World Cup qualifiers to Namibia in Swakopmund last year.

 

Despite losing, Namibia, can take hope from the series as they were missing some of their top players while several new youngsters, including 14-year-old Azaylee Philander and 16-year-old Amber Dercksen, made promising debuts for the national side.

 

Namibia were also hampered by the non-availability of captain Magy Mengo for the first two tests due to a throat infection, but she came back by the third test, and in the fourth game she set a Namibian record by winning her 50th cap for her country.

 

Namibia coach Erwin Handura said that he is very proud of his players but was not too happy with the officiating and called for neutral umpires as the umpires denied us two positive results and the way forward is to have international neutral umpires to officiate. Now we need to compete regularly and against stronger opposition in order to be ready for the next World Cup in 2023.

“We gave a great performance with such a young team. These matches are so close, and the tension is very high and there’s no room for errors from the umpires,” Handura said.